A deformation-dependent soil-water characteristic surface model considering hysteresis

Abstract

The soil-water characteristic surface model plays an essential part in predicting the hydraulic behaviour of unsaturated soils. Based on the theory of plasticity bounding surface, this paper presents a three-dimensional soil-water characteristic surface model considering the effects of deformation and hysteresis. Suction and void ratio are adopted as independent variables, while the degree of saturation is adopted as a dependent variable. A new mapping rule is used where the distance between the current position and its image point can be calculated as a difference in the degree of saturation axis. The model is verified by comparing with drying-wetting tests on bentonite/kaolin mix and pearl clay. The efficiency of the proposed model is proven by validation tests.